Lost
by Lire
Summary: During a bout of insomnia, Lucy mourns the woman she might have become, and decides to risk parental disapproval and become her anyway. Ch. 3 now up.
1. Still of the Night

Lucy stared at the ceiling. More accurately, she stared at where the ceiling would have been, had she been able to see. Someone had once said, "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you." Or something like that. Over the past half-year, she'd done her best to drive the thoughts like that out of her head. Thoughts like that could be dangerous, now. Because thoughts like that made you discontent with your life.  
  
And Lucy wasn't supposed to be discontent.  
  
She had a boyfriend. Admittedly, the boyfriend lived in Buffalo, but still, he was a boyfriend. That was all she was supposed to want. But Lucy had wanted more, much more. Lucy had wanted the world--and she could have gotten it. But by trying hard enough, she could forget that fact during the daylight. During the daylight, yes, but at night...at night everything she'd lost came back to haunt her.  
  
Lucy crept towards the bathroom, moving as quietly as she had learned how after many nights of sleeplessness. She held her breath. The house that was never quiet didn't move at all, only rhythmic breathing betrayed the bodies living behind the close doors. Looking in the mirror, Lucy caught her own eye. As she looked into the eyes of the person she had neglected so long, tears began to roll down her cheeks.  
  
All the sudden, the memories she had created as the person she had become to protect her heart seemed to flash through the mirror. Losing her temper to the airport security. Wearing horrible clothes to a memorial service. Bowing to her mothers will. Giving up all her freedom and personality to move back home. Losing all her dreams. Joining herself to Mary at the hip so her Mother wouldn't get mad. Mary could do no wrong, despite all the trouble she'd gotten into. (Even through her tears, Lucy noticed how she had phrased that thought. Not Mom, but her Mother.) But Lucy--she who had always tried her hardest to be good--she got into trouble left and right. So, bit by bit, she'd relinquished her personality, her goals, her dreams.  
  
The tears came faster now, as Lucy mourned not only who she had been, but every hope of the woman she had wanted to become.  
  
That thought stopped Lucy in her tracks. 'I don't want to give her up. I want to grow up. I can never grow up here.' She stopped weeping. There was still no one around. Her crying had woken no one. Bitterly, Lucy bared her teeth in what could only loosely be called a smile. 'They don't even wake up to see why I'm crying,' she thought. 'They cut their ties to me so loosely. Fine. From this moment on, I reclaim my life. Even if I can only do it in the still of the night.'  
  
Lucy dried her tears and left the bathroom. She hesitated on the way back to her room. Back to where Mary had lately been, and where Ruthie was trying to leave. There was nothing to hold her there, nothing at all.  
  
Lucy turned on her heel and went down to the kitchen. All of the sudden, she knew what she would do. The other times she woken from dreams she tried so hard to pretend she couldn't hear, she'd done small things, written poetry, read the books she couldn't give up…never before had she tried to make a bid for freedom. But Lucy knew something now. 'They can only keep me down with my consent', she thought. 'I know longer give my consent. I'll show them what I can do'.  
  
This time, when her lips pulled back, her expression looked much more like a smile. But it was not a pleasant smile. Her heart of hearts wouldn't be crushed anymore, and perhaps, Lucy thought to herself, it'll grow the stronger because of it. And I know that no matter the danger I'll never be pleasant again. 


	2. The Darkest Hour

Lucy turned on a lamp and blinked rapidly in the light. Lines from Tennyson drifted across her mind "An infant crying in the night/And infant crying for the light." This time, she did not bother to quash them but thought, 'I have language beyond a cry."  
  
She pulled an empty notebook from a stack on the coffee table. It had once symbolized the wreck of her dreams. Well then, let it symbolize a new set of dreams. Ones no one could take from her. Lucy had begun notebooks before, ones titled "My Thoughts" or "My Dreams" or "My Goals"…those notebooks had all been lost or she had lost interest. But this one…this one Lucy titled "What I Want" and it would be her passport to freedom.  
  
Thinking of all the castles in the air she had built and then willingly destroyed, Lucy again began to cry. 'How can I ever get anything back?' she asked herself. 'I can't just go off and be a minister. Not anymore. Not now. I just want to go to college. But I don't have a college to go to anymore. Let alone enough money.'  
  
Again, the tears did nothing to melt her resolve. 'Fine then. I'll get a job. And a post office box, so no mail will come here and betray my plans. And then—I'll change my name. I can't be Lucy Camden anymore. Not the way we've become. And I'm not strong enough yet to remember us the way we used to be.'  
  
She began busily writing. Where she wanted to go, and how much money she'd need. She had some money saved, money she hadn't needed since coming back from New York.  
  
When she had left the first time, it hadn't been an escape. Lucy had gone to New York because it was the next step in the progression. 'But then I came back. I guess I wasn't ready. I am now.' When she returned, Lucy had thought there was nothing that could convince her to leave her family. Now there were very few things she wouldn't give to leave  
  
It was almost funny how much a few short months had changed things. Actually, it was probably funnier how much could be lost in that same amount of time. Lucy had thought she had everything to lose. She had been wrong. Or maybe she just had lost it all. But there are a lot more options open to someone who had nothing to lose and thence nothing to risk.  
  
Again, Lucy smiled. And again, had anyone been watching, they would have known that nothing was going to stand in this girl's way again. The lessons Lucy had learned since she had come home were difficult ones. That sometimes love isn't enough. That sometimes trust can be broken. That you cannot save the ones you love if they won't save themselves. But she been through enough tears to brand them forever onto her soul. And she would remember them.  
  
"Please," she prayed softly. "From this moment on, let me have no more regrets." 


	3. Dawn

"Lucy Camden!"  
  
Lucy started from her reverie. Her mother's voice held all the rage that had been fading since Ben and Kevin had come to visit. "Good morning, mother."  
  
"What are you doing down so early?"  
  
"I was just thinking…" Lucy stammered.  
  
"What was so important that you had to be downstairs at six in the morning? Why can't you be more like all the good children in this house? I'm disappointed in you. Now go to your room and don't come back out till you can act responsibly."  
  
As Annie finished her diatribe, she turned away; satisfied that order had been restored in her home. Lucy fled, not bothering to hide her tears. As she ran upstairs, she passed Matt. He turned his head away, knowing full well what must have happened and choosing (perhaps wisely) not to get involved. Even though she knew how wise it has, Lucy started sobbing louder. At the sound, the Reverend hurried out of his room.  
  
"Who's hurt?" he asked, sounding worried. But when he saw Lucy, he too turned away. Unlike when Matt had done the same thing just seconds ago, this brought Lucy out of herself. She thought of a lesson the old Lucy had learned. 'Look to the good. Find one purpose for a situation, one reason why it had to happen.'  
  
Locking herself in the bathroom, Lucy began to apply the wisdom she gleaned from her studying. 'What can the reason for this situation be?' she asked herself. 'Maybe…maybe it's in case I was beginning to have doubts. Annie has been acting almost normally recently.' Even as she was thinking, Lucy didn't notice that she referred to her mother by her given name.  
  
'The darkest hour comes just before the dawn,' Lucy thought. 'Maybe this is my darkest hour, so now all I have to do is wait for dawn. But dawn seems so far off right now.'  
  
"The journey of a thousand miles beings with a single step," Lucy told her reflection. It was that thought that got her up to her attic bedroom.  
  
Her entrance, unlike her leaving woke Ruthie. "You're years older than me, yet you can't handle Mom."  
  
"When I was your age, I didn't have to."  
  
"Well, you're supposed to be all smart and everything. Of course, we all know I'm the smartest Camden," Ruthie looked superior.  
  
"That may soon be true." For the first time in a long time, Lucy pulled back and looked at her little sister. All the sudden, Lucy was overcome with a desire to save her sister as well as herself. 'You can't do it all,' she told herself. 'Get your own life set, and then you can begin with Ruthie. Or' a note of alarm crept into her thoughts. 'Maybe I'm to late for Ruthie. Sam and David—'  
  
Lucy shook her head to clear her thoughts. She knew full well she couldn't save the world. She'd reconciled herself to that long ago. But the thought that she couldn't even save her baby brothers struck at the core of her newly awakened heart.  
  
Even so, it was with hope that Lucy turned and her face and her first true (albeit small) smile to face the rising sun. 


End file.
